Lady Killer (1933)

When a movie theater usher is fired, he takes up with criminals and finds himself quite adept at various illegal activities. Eventually though, the police catch up with him, and he runs to hide out in Los Angeles. There he stumbles into the movie business and soon rises to stardom. He has gone straight, but his newfound success arouses the interest of his old criminal associates, who are not above blackmail...

Unbeatable pre-code Cagney - great package

"Lady Killer" is now available on DVD and what an entertaining film it is. This film was released just before the imposition of the Hays Code and we can be grateful.

The film stars the magnetic Jimmy Cagney as a bellhop who becomes a con man, flees the police and winds up in Hollywood as a film star. This gives the script the opportunity to satirise a number of genres and the swipes at the studio system are hilarious. Mae Clarke, of the grapefruit from "Public Enemy", stars opposite Cagney as a moll and she is terrific. The film is very well directed by Roy del Ruth and the pace never lets up.

The print is excellent and the DVD comes with some entertaining extras. Drew Casper's commentary centres fully on Cagney and rightly so but he also makes some enlightening remarks about the filming techniques, illustrating how the Warner's product was able to maintain such hectic pacing without spoiling the narrative. Warner's night at the movies is included too and for those who may be interested, the musical short is a rotten short operetta but it stars Jane Froman, immortalised later by Susan Hayward in the musical "With a Song in My Heart".

The DVD is good value but even better if purchased as part of the Gangster Collection Volume 3. April 25, 2008

fantastic--but overlooked--vehicle for Jimmy Cagney

Lady Killer is a marvelous, much overlooked vehicle for the great Jimmy Cagney to showcase his numerous talents. Cagney does comedy, his typical gangster type role, a little bit of drama and more in this snappy motion picture.

The action starts when Dan Quigley (Cagney) gets fired from his job as a movie theater usher; and when he gets taken by a group of small time con artists he joins them rather than getting even with them. Soon we meet Mae Clarke as Myra Gale, Duke (Leslie Fenton) and Spade Maddock (Douglas Dumbrille) along with a few more shady characters in the group of con artists.

Things go bad when an accidental murder takes place during a jewel heist; and they eventually all flee to California to escape the heat. Things aren't easy; the cops are still after them but at least in California they have a little breathing room. Just by chance, a couple of studio headhunters find Quigley and offer him a bit part in a movie. Things get even more interesting when Dan Quigley rises to stardom and meets a woman he truly loves, Lois Underwood (Margaret Lindsay).

Of course, the plot can go anywhere from here. Will Quigley and Underwood become a couple? Will the police catch Quigley and his former con artist friends? What if the con artist group catches up with Quigley after he becomes a Hollywood star? No spoilers here, folks--you'll have to watch the movie to find out!

The choreography is very well done in the scenes where Cagney is acting in a film within the film; and the cinematography works well, too.

Overall, this fine Jimmy Cagney vehicle stands the test of time as a very good and underappreciated movie. I highly recommend this film for fans of the great Jimmy Cagney; and people who enjoy classic movies will love this one, too!
February 1, 2008

Gangster film based somewhat on a true story

The product information on this film lists everyone in the cast but the real star and the reason to watch this film - James Cagney.
1933's "Lady Killer" reteams James Cagney with Mae Clarke, their previous teaming being in Cagney's star vehicle "The Public Enemy". Cagney plays Dan Quigley, a movie usher who gets fired and then falls in with a gang of hoodlums to make ends meet and plus he likes the excitement. However, when a robbery at a mansion goes very wrong, Quigley leaves town and heads for California. There he does well as an actor in the movies until his old gang hears about his success and his past deeds come back to haunt him. Here poor Mae Clarke gets slapped around again, just as she had been in "Public Enemy". No wonder that she looks so worriedly at that grapefruit in the California travel brochure. For those of you who have seen "Public Enemy" you know what I mean. The extra features on this DVD are:
Two exclusive WB shorts: The Camera Speaks and Kissing Time
Original theatrical trailer
WB cartoon: The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives

I'd tell you about the true story this film is based on, but it might be perceived as giving away the ending. This film is part of the larger third volume of The Warner Gangsters, which is a boxed set that is released on the same day as this movie. December 24, 2007

Brash

I've been watching a lot of early Cagney movies lately (thanks to TCM). One of the better ones was "Lady Killer". James Cagney plays his usual brash self right from the start where we see him too smart for his own good. He gets into a situation where he gets taken and then becomes the taker. In time, he and his "gang" have become rather successful but may have tried to reach too far. After making tracks for the other side of the country (while on the lam), Cagney stumbles into an opportunity to make it in the movie business. Some of the movie's insights to the sometimes random road to stardom come across rather humorous. Later, his old gang shows up at the wrong time and threatens to spoil the fun. Well, enough of the plot; you get the idea.

As in many of the movies of that era, some of the situations are a bit hard to swallow; reality movies didn't come along until later. However, watching the smooth artistry of Cagney is worth while and "Lady Killer" is a good enough movie to catch him in. He's one of the greatest actors of his generation and defines "tough guy" better than even the likes of Bogart. In their prime, Cagney didn't seem to draw the sure-winning scripts that Bogart did so he seems to be in danger of drifting into Hollywood oblivion. Outside of "Yankee Doodle Dandy", there are many of his movie that command respect these days. "White Heat" ranks right up there in talent but no where near "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in popularity. That's really unfortunate because he was a real talent. But then, if you're reading this, you already know that. July 22, 2006

Lady Killer: Attitude is All

When James Cagney squished a grapefruit into the squealing face of Mae Clarke in PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), he began a trend of abuse to women that has percolated on and off in Hollywood since then. PUBLIC ENEMY was a serious if cliched crime drama that required grit on the part of the audience to view. Two years later, in LADY KILLER, director Roy Del Ruth took off some of the edginess from a snarling Cagney and morphed him from a stereotypical punk to one whose snarling exterior hid a gentler and, surprisingly enough, a more humorous interior. Mae Clarke in LADY KILLER is a mirror image of Cagney's character. She is initially portrayed as a heartless grifter who scams kind gentlemen into playing in a crooked poker game. Enter Cagney as one of those recently unemployed men whose non-working status must have resonated with the audience of a depression that had been ripping America apart for nearly four years. She rips him off not once but twice. However, Del Ruth gives hints that beneath her grifty-edged brassiness lies a woman who at least can slowly see in Cagney a reason to revive her latent decency. During the course of the seventy-four minutes of the film, both Cagney and Clarke bounce off each other in all the right ways that show that in a different moral universe, they might have been happy together. Their relation, therefore, is based on the premise that the moral depravity of a long standing depression could be leavened by finding one's mirror image. The other female lead is Margaret Lindsay, who plays an established Hollywood star who helps Cagney become a movie star in his own right even as he is on the lam from his grifting relation with Mae Clarke. Lindsay is sweetness personified, and in her untainted self, she is ordained as the woman who can pick up the pieces of a healing Cagney that Clarke helped to crush when the latter took off with Cagney's bail money, thus forcing him to remain in jail on a variety of charges.

LADY KILLER starts off in much the same manner as did PUBLIC ENEMY, but the oddly changing relation of Cagney and Clarke soon enough lets the audience know that in this universe at least, a much needed sense of humor and fun must emerge. There is even an inside joke in a train station about a grapefruit that no one in the audience would fail to connect to PUBLIC ENEMY. By the film's midpoint, the scene in which Cagney disrupts Lindsay's birthday party with a dozen monkeys clearly continues the process of demythologizing Cagney as a straight hoodlum. In another scene, Cagney plays an Italian giggolo in a movie within this movie who has the uprorious task of romancing Lindsay right after a lover's quarrel. During the last ten minutes, LADY KILLER combines a standard plot of the hero's former crooked pals now trying to kill him in a car chasing machine gun popping scene with a more human and calmer hero who can look at his new girlfriend (Lindsay) and see that his old one (Clarke) are not all that different after all. Even now, some seven decades later, the audience can gasp and cry and laugh in a roller coaster fashion and still wonder if Cagney really wound up with the right woman. July 17, 2006

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